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Understandable....I had my knee surgery this week (and I'm already starting to walk around like normal....crazy)....it did make me look for more things to do in the house while I was confined, and was antsy to discuss this....I feel like the show is starting to run out of steam to me....

(I was smck40, but unlike George Lucas, when I write something you can't speak I change...and upgraded....the username!)

"How come EVERYONE can do an awesome rendition of 'All Along the Watchtower'....except for Bob Dylan who wrote the damned song??"

Coulson: “You know, it would be nice – if for once – Thor and his people sent down The God Of Cleaning Up After Yourself. They probably have a magic broom for this kind of thing.”
Skye: “I just wish they left their alien ship behind.”
May: “So we can clean that up too?”
Skye: “So we go inside. Take a peek under the hood. Maybe take it for a spin. Come one, you’re telling me piloting an alien ship isn’t on your bucket list?”
Coulson: “I can’t think of a single time when anything alien in human hands ended well.”
Skye: “Wouldn’t mind getting my human hands on Thor. He’s so dreamy.”
Coulson: “Sure, he’s handsome, but….”
May: “No, he’s dreamy.”

Coulson: “I was hoping for less metaphor, more longitude and latitude.”

Skye: “It’s a long shot but Vikings sacked Seville twice.”
May: “We found once promising location with Viking relics. El Divino Nino. A church built on the ruins of an 8th century crypt built on Roman ruins from 206 BC.”
Ward: “East of a river.”
Coulson: “And lots of bones. Let’s see what we can dig up. See what I did there?”

Coulson: “I’ve spent some one on one time with aliens before. Didn’t work out too well. So, cases like this are personal to me.”

Ward: “You were right. He’s Asgardian.”
Coulson: “Good thing. Otherwise, that would have been awfully embarrassing.”

Skye: “This is way way better than the history channel. I mean this guy has lived through all the scary stuff. The Crusades. The Black Death. Disco.”

Coulson: “Sometime you have to just jump in and figure things out. Now, Asgardians regenerate faster than we do. Maybe we can keep him alive long enough…”
Simmons: “…for his body to heal itself.”
Coulson: “Okay what am I looking for?”
Simmons: “His heart.”

Ward: “When you held it, did you see anything? … Then how? How did you hold all three?”
May: “Because I see it every day.”

Randolph: “I know that look. You tempted? Now what is it you want to see?”
Coulson: “You and I have a lot in common. We’ve both been stabbed in the heart. I was killed. Well, almost. I’m hazy on that. Afterwards it’s kind of a blank. I have no memory of being revived. Of being in a hospital. Just woke up a few months later.”
Randolph: “And are you haunted by it Mr. Coulson?”
Coulson: “No. Not exactly.”
Randolph: “Then what’s the problem?”
Coulson: “I suppose you’re right. Can we give you a lift back to the University?”
Randolph: “Well you know with Europe’s new fascination with all things Asgardian, I’m wondering if it’s time to start over somewhere else.”
Coulson: “Nice beach? A life of tropical drinks and massages?”
Randolph: “Mmmm. Oh. I’d get bored.”
Coulson: “You should consider the American Northwest. Maybe Portland. Good food scene. Great philharmonic.”
Randolph: “Well if you will come and visit. It’s not everyone I get to share my stories with.”
Coulson: “Sure. And if Thor’s in town, I’ll introduce you.”

Skye: “When you’re a guy who saves lives I can overlook a little Hulk rage. No harm, no foul.”
Ward: “Does everything just roll off your back?”
Skye: “No. If it helped I’d rage all the time but it doesn’t.”
Ward: “What I saw. It was about my brother.”
Skye: “I figured. I know you’re not one to talk but like I said I’m here. My shoulder’s free.”
Ward: “I’m beat. Another time maybe.”
Skye: “Well you know where I live.”

After going to see Thor 2 earlier than I otherwise would have, I was cautiously optimistic about what we would get in this episode. I really liked Thor 2 and wanted to see how it would continue in AoS.

I wasn't incredibly enamored with Thor 2. The isolation of the Thor group after The Avengers seemed forced and, in the end, blatantly forcing a Thor-only story. I did enjoy the Loki arc but thought that that there should have been more villain/Dark Elf development as well as more background of Thor's small band. The total lack of S.H.I.E.L.D. or actual mention of the other Avenger's specific whereabouts bothered me, but I did enjoy the special cameo. I also felt that Fandral, Sif, Dr. Erik Selvig and Richard as played by Chris O'Dowd were not used nearly as well or as much as they could have been. But I did enjoy the more extensive peeks into Asgardian life and the CGI. Perhaps I'm just suffering from post-Avengers awesomeness since I didn't enjoy Iron Man 3 nearly as much as the previous two either. However, like you I was curious as to how Thor 2 would interact with Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. and wanted to see how the Thor 2 story was continued on the small screen.

Originally Posted by Amberite

The Thor 2 Clean-up - As was mentioned in another thread, there wasn't actually a ton of reference to the movie. The clean-up at London's University of Greenwich was cute, but it was cursory and served to get people who would have probably waited a few weeks to rush out and see the movie... like I did. "Marvel & ABC Marketing departments, you get a raise, and I deserve to feel a tiny bit bitter."

Yes, if it wasn't for the Thor 2 tie in with Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. I probably would have waited to see it on Blu-ray like I did with Iron Man 3. But I echo your thoughts and hope that the tie in with Captain America 2 is tremendously better. I can't really blame Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. for what they presented us since they only knew they were getting 6 episodes for sure when planning began on this months ago. However, even a reference to the alien animal left roaming England would have been nice.

Originally Posted by Amberite

I was hoping to see how they dealt with the damage to London, any residual portals, and even the ice-demon/dog creature that was left behind. While this could be counted as a missed opportunity, I get how the writers of the show / Marvel wanted to avoid any spoilers for fans who hadn't seen the movie yet. In fact, I don't think I'm even that upset about not exploring the aftermath in London; the rest of the episode moved along at great pace and pulled me with it, making me largely forget about the tie-in with the movie.

I have a couple of thoughts about this. First of all as the time grows longer from when I saw Thor 2 and this Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. episode I keep forgetting about the spoilers aspect that you brought up. But it is a valid point and I thank you for reminding me of it. Secondly I also agree that the rest of the episode quickly moved away from the introduction scene and thus away from Thor 2. However, for such a highly billed tie-in, it really sucked.

Originally Posted by Amberite

The Asgardian Artifact storyline - There was no doubt that this was a prime opportunity for the writers to explore the historical significance of Asgardian technology on earth and how it could impact the current day. I liked the whole berserker army concept mixed in with the angry neo-paganistic thugs reminiscent of european skinheads. The introduction of a pacifist Asgardian living among us and steeped in mythology and historical texts was interesting, but seemed to be a bit of a sideline story. If the prof had been just a human professor, and told them where to find the staff and told them the myth about an Asgardian who lived among us, it probably still would have worked, but we would have missed out on the opportunity for Coulson to have a pseudo-cathartic moment when he saved the life of an Asgardian stabbed in the chest by a human. It's an interesting parallel, but we didn't get to explore how this affected him (more below).

We would also have missed out on a future opportunity for a Thor 3 cross over. Plus this makes a future Dr. Randolph character re-engagement in Portland even better.

Originally Posted by Amberite

The interactions between the team members were pretty complex, including Ward supporting Simmons at the tree, Skye being supportive (and not being taken up on it) by Ward, and Ward taking May up on her 'offer' at the end. I really hope they just stayed up drinking, but I think the writers want to leave it open and be intentionally ambiguous about what happened.

This was delicious. I hope this sort of parallel character interaction is brought forward in the series and not just left in this episode as stand alone.

Originally Posted by Amberite

Lots of Ward in this episode, and not all of it bad. I'm warming to his character, but I really need to see more of Ward living up to his rep by kicking butt and taking names. The church full of berserker thugs was a great start

I'm fully convinced of Ward badassery now. Anyone can be a berserker, but Ward (and May for that matter) was able to channel his skills and S.H.I.E.L.D. training to take on several thugs at once. I'm more concerned about how the staff will effect him since Dr. Randolph mentioned that while the physical staff effects would only last a few more hours the anger issues would last a few more decades. This should for all intents and purposes permanently change the Ward character. Plus the insights into Ward's childhood pivotal event was very intriguing indeed.

Originally Posted by Amberite

As usual, May was the stand-out for me again. Her calm, cool demeanour, her ability to take the rage staff and then put it down after taking out the berserker girl was pretty danged cool, and her line about always dealing with what she saw was almost identical to Banner's "I'm Always Angry" in the Avengers. Her dry line about Thor being dreamy (I forget the exact line) drew confirmation from my wife. And while I think her invitation to Ward (and ward taking her up on it) could definitely screw up the team dynamic, I respect her invitation to ward at the end given what they had shared. May personifies the no nonsense, straight to business, no extraneous crap SHIELD agent, and as we saw in the one-sided dialogue with Coulson in a previous episode, she doesn't even have to talk to communicate her intentions. We saw that again with the open door invitation (without anything having to be spoken), which is the direct opposite to Berserker-Ward's comment about Skye always talking. It's an interesting parallel which I'm sure the writers put in intentionally. However, for two by-the-books agents, it does bug me as it's probably against regs for two agents on a team to, ahem, fraternize.

While May stood out to me in this episode it was no more than any of the other team characters. But I did enjoy her character in this episode immensely. I'm not convinced that there are S.H.I.E.L.D. regs about fraternization. I wouldn't be surprised if there were but we haven't seen any of them yet so we would know for sure.

Originally Posted by Amberite

Jonathan Frakes' directing was great. Moody shots in the catacombs and moreover, quick pacing that didn't pull me out of the story. In the past episodes, when the pacing has fallen off, or the tension in the scene was absent, I found myself moving out of the moment. Even with the interrogation, there was a tension that Frakes got out of the scene, drawn primarily from Clark Gregg's performance. You could tell he didn't like dealing with Asgardians, or at least ones that were deceiving him. I bought his character in these moments.

I've come to love Frakes' directing and well as Robert Duncan McNeill. In fact I'm pretty sure Frakes saved this episode from what could have been a large post-Thor 2 let down for all the reasons you already pointed out.

Originally Posted by Amberite

Overall a very solid and enjoyable episode, and I hope we get more of the same coming up. I'm still watching and starting to get into it more.

I sure am excited to watch the next episode - already queued up in my DVR.

Originally Posted by Amberite

Oh, after the cut, Tahiti blah blah blah. Obviously now he's having dreams and is tormented about Tahiti. Viewers got his concern about it in his conversation with the Asgardian and from his actions in every episode leading up to this. The dream sequence didn't actually add anything - just another blunt attempt to remind viewers that Coulson's "Tahiti resurrection" is a big deal. If his concern over Tahiti is getting worse, he could have said "it's getting worse" in passing to the Asgardian when they were talking about it, or in a subsequent episode to May. We get it - this is the big mystery - move on and deal with it, or build some tension by making us wonder about it. Yawn.

I enjoyed actually seeing footage of this time, whether it was just Coulson dreaming it or remembering it. The scene reminded me of the Captain America WWII New York hospital bed. Coulson may have just been in the basement of The Hub or other S.H.I.E.L.D. main operational center and not in Tahiti.

Mal “The wheel never stops turning, Badger.”
Badger “That only matters to the people on the rim.”

Instead, this would have been the right opportunity to explore how saving an Asgardian who was stabbed in the chest impacted Coulson, or how S.H.I.E.L.D. dealt with the Asgardian tech. Was the staff placed into the Vault, or handed back to the Asgardians? It would have been cool to have had a cameo from Heimdall/Idris Elba or Sif/Jamie Alexander or Volstagg/Ray Stevenson (none are strangers to the small screen) or another supporting character from the Thor universe and have the staff handed back as a gesture of goodwill. This would have tied it back into the movie at the end of the episode, echoing the tie-in at the start of the episode, bringing it full circle, and reminding the viewers that it was a Thor the Dark World tie-in.

That would indeed have been a cool cameo. But I'm not sure how the payment for things like that work. Still, it would have been cool. Zachary Levi as Fandral would have been awesome. And he is no stranger to geek TV either (a.k.a. Chuck Bartowski/"The Intersect").

~SO

Last edited by Shooter; December 1st, 2013 at 04:06 AM.

Mal “The wheel never stops turning, Badger.”
Badger “That only matters to the people on the rim.”

I was kind of hoping to have Loki appear to the bad guys in the tag scene to berate them for their failure. That would explain how they happened to find the staff in the same episode as the Thor 2 tie-in.

Spoiler:

Yes. The tie to how the staff was found in the first place was loose at best. A Loki/Thor 2 tie-in would have been a better use of the "tie-in" billing, but would have it spoiled Thor 2 too much for those that didn't get a chance to see it yet?

Mal “The wheel never stops turning, Badger.”
Badger “That only matters to the people on the rim.”

Nearly forgot one or two things that did bug me a bit during the episode. When the two Swedish (Norwegian or am I confused?) park rangers were talking to each other, they did it in English. So did the Scandinavian Pagan hate thugs. OK, so maybe the berserkers were a hodge-podge of different nationalities, but as soon as the rangers spoke english... BLAM... I was out of the moment and complaining to my wife about it.

Petty complaint? Maybe, but compare that to last week's Arrow episode that had Summer Glau and Oliver Queen speaking Russian to each other with subtitles, Oliver speaking to the Russian mob boss in Russian, and Russians speaking Russian to each other, and you see my point. Arrow seems to be pushing a bit harder to get things right.

The other was Simmons putting on a harness to walk maybe 10 feet up the tree, and over-acting the whole "she needs coaxing up the tree" schtick. It appeared both earlier and later in the episode that anyone could use the scanners, so why send her up the tree? And how long did it take to rope her in and set up the harness, and waste a no-name agent manning the rope on the belay? If it's serious enough to bring in SHIELD, why waste that kind of time?

I'm a little less concerned with the English spoken in Norway (or Sweden for that matter). Somewhere between 80-90 percent of Scandinavians speak English so it is entirely possible that the conversation could have occurred in English.

Arrow? I'm on episode 3 now of season 1. I'm trying to stay spoiler free as I catch up, so as a humble request please try to stay Arrow-spoiler-free in here. When I catch up I'll be posting threads to Arrow in the forum.

The whole tree thing did take me out of the episode. 1) It wasn't that high. 2) It was NOT cut down properly. 3) The base cut was too straight and that chain saw was too small to make that cut.

My best response to you on the scene was that they had witness testimony of what happened to the person after touching the staff. In a nod to the post Battle Of New York Chitauri helmet virus I'd be a little careful when dealing with post-Thor 2 event stuff as well. But yes, they have flying sensors that seem to have the ability to not only do what Simmons did but a whole lot more, too. Seems like a waste to send her up there.

Mal “The wheel never stops turning, Badger.”
Badger “That only matters to the people on the rim.”

It is always fun when Hollywood takes a stab at depicting Norway. The only thing that was anything like Norway was how the woods looked. (However our trees are nowhere near a thousand years old.) The truck was wrong, we don´t have park rangers like that and there was incorrect grammar on the sign... Even the road from the news coverage was easy to see was not from Norway.

The ranger that survived did however kind of sound like the way we speak english. None of the others were even close. The only modern movie/tv thing I know of that did this right was the new The Thing. Norwegian actors speaking norwegian to each others.

From what I understand there are a lot of folks on your side of the atlantic that strongly despise reading subs, so I think maybe the creators did the right thing though in using english speaking actors. I just find it annoying that they have them speaking a broken english. They all differ in how they mispronounce words so the illusion is just half assed anyway. (And also not really important to the storytelling. This show has pushed the suspension of disbelief way past these kinds of considerations anyway.)

This might sound like I had any problems with the show, but I find it highly entertaining. But I always drop any expectations of realism before watching the show. Character interaction however needs to be solid. And I think it is in this show.

IMHO of course.

BTW I actually think the exteriors of the diamond heist was shot in Stockholm.

Thanks for the perspective from an ACTUAL Norwegian.

It appears that this show has neither the budget nor the desire to be authentic. Hollywood-close-enough seems to be how they are proceeding - as in the enitre Marvel Universe.

Mal “The wheel never stops turning, Badger.”
Badger “That only matters to the people on the rim.”

Anybody else notice the Dollhouse hint in the final scene? I love the stuff they're doing with Coulson.

We're done with the initial 6 episodes and the series was picked up for a full 20 episode season. We're also past the character introductions for the most part. The show is starting to seriously hit its stride when it comes to the characters and their overall stories, but the week-to-week stories are...well...weak. But the more I watched last week's episode the more it grew on me. The dialog was amazing.

This week the Director, Jonathon Frakes, really brought what could have been a lackluster episode into much more than that. I also hope that Joss Wheddon is starting to pay some more attention to the series now that he has something to play with for more than 6 epsiodes.

Yup, you can call it Dollhouse or you can call it "Life Model Decoy" as it is known in the Marvel Universe...whatever that means. LMDs were referenced in Avengers by Tony Stark on his fake-phone message to Agent Couslon. I wouldn't rule out a clone either, though.

Mal “The wheel never stops turning, Badger.”
Badger “That only matters to the people on the rim.”

Yeah, way more better then last week was!!! (Maybe the clean up duty was a small punishment for all the rules they broke last week....I'd have like to see them push that a bit more).....the interactions were pretty good....glad to see Skye be less annoying again, and if we can mention Simmons' dive out of the airplane, this SHIELD team could certainly be in Fury's dog house too.... the alien angle was a nice touch and I loved Phil's deducing it, and the Thor name drop ....and hopefully this was a start with this show dealing with more super-humans stuff, I could have lived without the DEEP DARK SECRET of Ward as a kid....and I kinda groaned at the whole bully thing (but that might be me as a football fan being sick of hearing about Johnathan Martin too)....this episode did a damn good job of washing the bad taste of last week away....

I did have to make a wiseass comment when Phil said "he never saw anything alien do any good in human hands" and I had to say Green Lantern waved hi, cross-continuity be damned on that comment!!!

I think the clean up was probably S.H.I.E.L.D. all hands on deck. S.H.I.E.L.D. can't be infinitely big and Thor did leave a few HUGE messes around to clean up. However, your theory could have been referenced into the episode to maintain continuity with the series itself. However, if it was a test then Fury couldn't have cared less about the rules broken, right? Cause that would have been the point - to make the team break the rules in order to do the right thing.

Was Skye really less annoying? Her out of the box thinking is sounding more like Area 51 Aliens Conspiracy talk now and less creative thinking. But that's just me.

Coulson's call on Dr. Randolph being an Asgardian was pretty thin indeed. Yes, the pieces didn't fit 100% together but that didn't mean he was an Alien. He could have just been an associate of an Asgardian instead. And Ward would have killed him. Ooops. Clean up in holding cell 3.

There'a got to be more of Ward's past. Like he ended up killing the kid or something. Because the well stuff that we were shown in and of itself isn't all that traumatic in my opinion.

Even with Green Lantern you have to wonder if it's really any good. There's always a lot of death and destruction around that guy too. But for continuity's sake and our own sanity I'd recommend just sticking to the Marvel Universe. Otherwise we might start to go crazy in here.

Mal “The wheel never stops turning, Badger.”
Badger “That only matters to the people on the rim.”